


Valley of Death

by seazu



Series: Gallavich Week 2017 [3]
Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, GW2017, GW2017A, Gallavich Week, Gallavich Week 2017, M/M, Zombie Apocalypse, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-30
Updated: 2017-05-30
Packaged: 2018-11-07 00:33:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11047584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seazu/pseuds/seazu
Summary: Gallavich Week Day 3 - Alternate Season 7 EndingZombie AU: When Mickey crossed the border, he had no idea what was waiting for him. He didn't think he'd ever go back willingly but now it's his only hope.





	Valley of Death

America fades behind him as Mexico stretches before. He can see neither through the blurry sting of fat tears. Once the border is long behind him he pulls off the wig and clip on earrings, they occupy the space where Ian should be, but they don’t fill it. Even when he flicks on the radio he can’t fill the silence Ian leaves.

His insides twist and his throat feels like it’s choking him ( _treacherous bitch_ ). All he can think about is that other guy. The life Ian couldn’t leave behind. He thought love meant more than that, more than anything. But he’s going back to his boyfriend and his cushy life and his steady job and his family and his savings account. His brain betrays him, too, and decides to replay the voicemail Ian had left, while he thought Mickey had been asleep. His heart breaks all over again.

~

He finds an apartment (it’s a shithole), he finds work (it’s equally shitty), but he finds nothing that can fill the void. Somewhere along the way he’d convinced himself this would be exciting, more than just an escape from his past. All beaches and sunshine and tequila and burritos. Hawaiian style shirts every day and an ugly tan that would make him look even more like a gangster from a cheesy 90s cop show.

He thought that up until the point where he left Ian in the rearview mirror. Now it’s just a pit of despair. He tries to spend as much time away from his shitty apartment as possible because it just keeps getting smaller and smaller, and he can hear Ian’s dorky laugh and see him asleep on the bed, hear him whining about Mickey wasting the day when it’s so nice outside. But everything outside is as bad, like a home away from home. It’s all trash on the sidewalks and graffiti and whores and poverty and buildings falling apart. It’s hardly that different at all, except at home he didn’t feel quite so alone.

~

There’s suddenly more noise than he expected, not that he thought it would be anything less than party central ( _ spring break woo-woo _ ), except it occurs to him that it’s not spring break, it’s not just  _ always  _ spring break just because it’s TJ. So why the screaming? He’d chalked it up to  _ girls gone wild   _ but when he peeks out the window it’s less that, more  _ everyone gone wild _ . He checks for cameras first, looking around the corner from his third storey window, hanging out of it like he normally only does when he wants to smoke without fogging up his Studio. There aren’t any cameras, no MTV vans, just some idiot holding a camera phone until he gets mauled. Throat torn out in a way that is somehow so much fucking worse than any horror film managed to depict. 

“Jesus fuck…” he’s never closed his window faster, even almost breaks a leg getting to the door so he can lock and barricade it. 

Sure he’s played  _ what if   _ in his head plenty of times, working out what he’d do in this exact situation, but before this he’s always been around family and friends and in a place he’s familiar with and surrounded by people who speak his fuckin’ language. And with people screaming and choking on their own blood while they’re being eaten alive, it all seems a lot more real, and a lot more isolating, and all he can think about is Ian.

But that’s nothing new.

~

Mickey’s shithole becomes the best place on Earth for the next few days. Suddenly he feels like he never wants to leave, while before it felt suffocating. He isn’t sure how long this feeling of relief will last but he clings to it. He finds himself mostly crouched in his living-room/bedroom/dining-room, clutching a gun in one hand and a bat in the other. Afraid to move too much, or make noise. Afraid to alert  _ anyone  _ to his presence never mind the People-Eaters running around outside. 

Unlike people from films and TV shows, his mind jumps  _ straight   _ to the Z-word. But his brain keeps trying to rationalise. Like maybe it’s some bad reaction to some new drug, or they’d let the mentals out accidentally or the fucking Joker’s loose. Nothing takes the images he’d witnessed out of his mind. 

He doesn’t go near the window again for a while.

~

He runs out of cigarettes first. The stress gets to him too quickly, all he can do to pass time is smoke, and he exhausts his stash pretty quickly that way. But he’d been in prison long enough to know how to endure the worst of the withdrawals. The food goes next, that was a bit more worrying. He’d never been one to hoard food, he more bought it (or took it) as he needed it. And mostly would just get as much junk food as he thought would get him through a day or two, rarely anything of substance. He’s living to regret that now. 

It’s when he finishes the last of his Pringles that he dares to look out the window. The streets are deserted for the most part, aside from patches of blood and guts that bring to mind the image of someone jumping from a plane or the tallest building he can think of, and landing in a  _ splat _ . Some of the windows of other buildings and apartments look boarded up, where he supposes people on ground floors tried to stop anyone getting in, or to patch up holes in the glass. 

He tries to plot a course to the store but the horror fanatic in him tells him the savvy shoppers probably already wiped out the best of the food supplies in built up areas like this, and what are the chances there are still any cigarettes left? 

( _ So, where?) _

He scours the apartment for materials after he hesitates at the window for a few more moments, trying to figure out what to do. Finally he settles on duct-taping his shirt sleeves up his arms and taping a dishtowel around his neck to protect as much of himself from biting as possible.

( _ If I can’t bite through it, a zombie shouldn’t be able to) _

He does the same to his legs and then puts a loose pair of pants over the top because he feels like a jackass. A jacket over his shirt and a trapper hat to top it off. 

_ (Far too fucking hot for this bullshit) _

_ (Bet it’s hotter in Hell…) _

He gets his duffel bag and sunglasses, gets his gun and his bat, and he heads out. Cautiously. After all of the noise when it broke out, it’s been disturbingly quiet since. Every creak of floorboards and every door he opens sounds like a roar into the void. Except it could very well be heard at any time. Anything he hears, he swears his heart stops and his blood runs cold.

~

The paranoia keeps him safe, and careful. He miraculously avoids run-ins with the Biters for the most part, the food is sparse when he first goes looking, and depletes to almost nothing by the time he decides he should leave. He assumes the Biters followed the people, and the people followed the food.

Mickey doesn’t want to follow the people or the food, he just wants to go home, find Ian and Mandy and Iggy and make sure they’re okay. What’s the point in surviving this alone?

~

Prison didn’t seem so bad after a couple of days on the road. The nightmares he’d suffered from while he was inside - fuck, since he was locked up in Juvie for the first time - they haven’t stopped. The only difference now is that being awake is worse. He wakes up in a panicked sweat every single night, screaming ringing in his ear so clear it never seems to leave. 

This morning is different, maybe because it’s still night, and the screaming really  _ is  _ clear. Too clear to be just a dream. Mickey is on high alert as soon as he processes that, and on his feet, gathering what little things he has and starting to move out. Noise like that is going to bring Biters in from every direction. But curiosity gets the better of him, or maybe some sense of morality that tells him he could help. ( _ Is it worth puttin’ my fuckin’ life at risk for some random Spick? _ )

He follows the noise into the town, but scales a ladder onto a fire escape so he can stick to the roofs and avoid the worst of the danger. It doesn’t take him long to spot the source of the screams; a guy is strung up to a lamppost like an old school lynching, except the mob below are dead. The Biters are roaring, a low guttural noise as they swipe at his ankles. There have to be at least twenty crowded around him, managing to rip bits of his lower leg and feet away, more stragglers are following the scream just like Mickey had. 

It takes him a while to figure it out. But then he sees another group of people. Actual living people. Using the distraction as an opportunity to clear out stores. Nothing they do is as loud as the pleading and screaming. He can see that the lynched guy is losing strength fast, to hold himself up by the rope. Even his scream is weaker. He knows that even if he could get over there in that time, avoid the Biters and scale the lamppost to cut him down, he’d already be dead, and he'd probably be eaten pretty quickly. Ultimately he decides that his life is worth more than Lynch. But he can do  _ something, _ even just to give the guys who strung someone up as a distraction some fuckin’ humble pie. 

He pulls out his gun and lines it up as best he can before firing at the guys head. The screaming stops instantly. Most of the Biters feast on what much of him they can reach when he falls limp, but a few others get distracted by a smashing noise when they can’t get close enough to the body to eat past the others. He watches them panic and start to run before he realises he fucked up his chance to scavenge food for himself, too.

~

He’s so hungry.

His stomach twists and growls persistently, telling him he’s starving like he doesn’t already know. Like he doesn’t feel sick with it, and his limbs drag and his head spins. Used to be all he could think about was Ian, now all he can think about is food. It’s no relief at all.

~

They’re stronger than he thought they’d be. They look weak, staggering like they do, leaving trails of blood like some rotting slug, like someone poured salt over the population and they’re bubbling and melting away. But once he's pinned under one, taken off-guard while he was trying to sleep, his opinion changes. Marginally.

The smell of rotting flesh fills him and he wretches immediately. Reaching for his bat, reaching for his gun, but trying to hold it off of him at the same time. It snaps, makes that same guttural sound he’d heard around the Lynched guy. Something so primal about it, and that faded glassy look in its eyes. He can’t be sure if it's a male or female in its past life, but right now it barely looks Human at all. 

Of course all of these thoughts flash by in a millisecond as most of his focus goes to escaping the immediate threat of being eaten alive. His arm stretches painfully to reach the nearest weapon and his noises of effort bounce off the Biter like it’s completely unaffected by his struggle. His hand touches metal and he closes his eyes and mouth once he lines up the gun and blasts a hole into it’s head. 

Fuck, he'd watched Zombieland, sure, but he ain’t got the ammo to waste like that Eisenberg kid, did with his double-tap bullshit. He’s gotta save at least one for himself. 

He pushes the body away and wipes his face clean of congealed blood with his sleeve. Just another stain to add to the collection. A rush of adrenaline keeps him light enough on his feet to gather his stuff and get going before he can be cornered by anyone who heard the gunfire. Or more pressing, any _ thing _ .

~

It’s not the first time he’s ever broken into a house. Not by a long shot. Not even recently. But before all of this he did it for a different kind of survival. Then it was more about making money to get by, now it's in pure desperation. The idea of a real bed, potential food and even a modicum of security is far too much to pass up on. 

As he slips inside and starts moving quietly from room to room to scope out any other occupants, he thinks maybe Biters is too kind a name for these things. He doesn’t really know where Zombies came from, what it means. It just doesn’t sound scary to him anymore, though. Biters is the same, now. He thinks he might as well call them Nibblers. Rippers doesn’t sound right either. Like Jack the Ripper, he was smart, probably. These things are more like cattle. That dopey expression, but sharp and blood thirsty. Brain thirsty? Nah, just fucking flesh thirsty. 

The place is empty, no nothin’s here. Once he’s certain of that he checks out the food supplies, and there isn’t much but to him it’s a fucking feast. It’s all he can do to stop from inhaling it as soon as he sees it. He purposefully packs his backpack with things that will do him the rest of the journey (or part of the journey, or as far as he’ll get before he gets eaten), and then settles in the bedroom to eat until he falls asleep. 

He doesn’t know how long he sleeps for, all he knows is he feels like he never wants to get up, but he has to. He has to get home. 

~

The closer he gets to the border, the thicker the traffic becomes. The more bodies he finds, and of course, the more… undead dead. Shit, fuck, no, that’s not good enough either. That’s just cheesy movie shit. 

The smell of death hangs heavy in the air, but the stillness is gone. That guttural rumble of the Dead sounds like a plague of God-damned locusts or something, and it makes Mickey feel deeply uneasy. There are cars lined up and down here, bumper to bumper, mostly abandoned. He can’t help but wonder what happened to all of the people. They can’t all be dead now, can they? There would be a fuck-tonne more dead ambling around here if that were the case.

He stays low, quiet and out of sight. Knifing any dead that get too close before they get a chance. He’s gotten fucking good. Turns out if he only had the survival skills he might have picked up at boy scouts, he’d be pretty good at this life. He reckons that’s all he’s missing, really. When he gets closer to the border patrol it becomes pretty clear the fuck happened here. Army barricades up and down the fencing, a white tent that reminds him of the end of ET and vans everywhere on the other side. He just hopes it means rescue. That the other side is safe. 

He gets closer and starts to run, just to avoid the few Tearerists which were starting to follow him. Within a few metres he spots people and then guns and twists sharply in the direction he’s running when he hears gunfire until he realises they’re just picking off the Gnashers behind him. Once he’s close, people in hazmat suits appear and then everything gets a little blurry. Something sharp and then he’s stripped and showered for the first time in weeks. But it’s cold, so cold it feels burning hot. There’s a strong chemical smell and for a moment he wonders if it’s even water. 

There’s sudden air rushing around him and he’s taken to another part of the big white tent, prodded like a pincushion, swabbed and velcro and different smells and sounds. Paper clothes. Fingerprints. People saying things, asking him stuff he doesn’t know the answer to. And then he’s asleep again.

~

He can smell Ian. Feel the long line of heat along his back. He presses against it, pulls his arm around his waist. He realises in that soft warm moment it had all been a dream. A stupid fucking nightmare. He’s home, he’s with Ian in their bed, everything is okay. Just his brain telling him not to let Ian get away. His eyes slide shut in the warmth and he thinks he can probably fall asleep for another few moments, why not. Ian’s chin presses insistently against his shoulder and Mickey turns automatically to kiss him. 

A low guttural rumble vibrates against his back and his eyes snap open to Ian’s rotting face snapping at him, sharp boney fingers clawing at his stomach and then teeth sinking into his flesh and pulls it away. 

Mickey screams-

He wakes in the tent again. Sweating and shaking, feeling feverish. He’s on a gurney, hooked up to drips and monitors, but as he tries to move to take one out he finds his hands are cuffed to the bed. His monitor beeps aggressively. He’s not in paper clothes anymore, he’s in a prison jumpsuit. 

~

“Are you fuckin’ kidding me? I survive that fuckin’ wasteland and get back here and you’re throwing me back in prison?”

“You wouldn’t have been out there in the first place, Mr Milkovich, if you hadn’t tried to escape.”

“You’re a bunch of fuckin bastards, you know that? Let me see my fuckin’ family first, then I’ll rot.” ( _ Rotters… that’s a good one) _

“You have people here already.”

“So let me talk to them!”

“You can’t talk to anyone, no one can know what happened th-”

“I don’t even fuckin’ know what happened, I don’t give a fuck about your outbreak bullshit, I just wanna see them!”

~

He doesn’t get to talk to them. He’s taken through someplace unfamiliar. Dragged along by two guards, turns his head and  _ bam  _ he sees Ian and he feels like he’s hit by a tonne of bricks. Just seeing him makes him want to fucking cry with relief. But he keeps getting dragged on. He can hear Ian shouting, Mandy too as they run up the hall towards him. Held back fighting by more guards. (“Mickey, Mick! Hey get the fuck off me, why won’t you let us see him, what the fuck! Get off me!”)

His struggles aren’t enough, he’s on a bus before he even realises it. 

The tranquillisers they have him on wear off the farther they drive. The last image of Ian he has is blurry at best. The loneliness takes hold and he doesn’t know what’s worse anymore; being out there with the Rotters, or rotting in a hole in isolation for the rest of his life. 

He thinks about Ian.

He thinks about Ian. 


End file.
